Does High Voter Turnout Still Favor the Democrats in the 2024 US Presidential Election?

While Election Day is technically on November 5 in the United States, some states have already started early in-person voting for the 2024 U.S. presidential election between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump.

Georgia started its early in-person voting on Tuesday, and former President Jimmy Carter made headlines by casting his vote at 100 years old. So, we can assume Kamala Harris has received at least 1 vote in the 2024 election, but the real news is the incredible early voter turnout in Georgia, which is one of the 7 key swing states in this race after Joe Biden was able to win it back for the Democrats in 2020.

Georgia’s Early Voting Posts Record Turnout Numbers

According to Georgia’s state election data, more than 312,000 voters cast their ballots on Tuesday, the 1st day of early voting in the state. This shatters the previous Day 1 record for early voting, which was 136,000 in 2020.

On Wednesday, Day 2 of early voting was also prolific as more than 270,000 voters showed up to vote. When you add in the 35,000 absentee ballots, that gives a total turnout near 620,000 in just 2 days.

This represents 8.6% turnout in 2 days for a state that has over 7,180,000 registered, active voters. State representatives have been blown away by the early turnout.

Which Party Does High Turnout Favor?

Historically speaking, it is believed that higher voter turnout favors the Democratic party, but that does not mean there is a perfect correlation between voter turnout and which candidate wins these elections. There are always many other factors to consider. 

With that said, high voter turnout has been the trend ever since the 2018 midterms, which was the 1st major election cycle following Trump’s huge upset win in the 2016 presidential election over Hillary Clinton.

In fact, the 2018 midterms, 2020 presidential election, and 2022 midterms have had 3 of the highest voter turnouts of any elections in decades in the United States:

• The 2018 election had the highest voter turnout (49%) for any midterm since 1914.
• The 2020 general election had the highest voter turnout (66.6%) for any presidential election since 1900.
• The 2022 election had the 2nd-highest voter turnout (46%) for any midterm since the 1970s, only falling behind the 49% mark in 2018.

You might say the polarizing figure of Trump gets people to come out and vote, and they’re either going to be for him or against him. Based on these 3 elections since he took office, the overall results of those elections were not that positive for the Republican party:

• In 2018, the Democrats gained a net of 41 seats to flip control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 2010. Republicans were able to gain 2 seats in the Senate.
• In 2020, Trump lost the election to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
• In 2022, a “Red Wave” was expected by the Republican party, but while it regained control of the House, it did not do so by a wide margin, and the Democrats had a stronger showing than expected while retaining control of the Senate with key wins in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Why Is Higher Turnout Considered a Positive for Democrats?

As for why it is believed that higher voter turnout will generally favor Democrats, it comes down to voting demographics. According to the Pew Research Center, White American voters were more likely to vote in each of the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections compared to non-White voters.

According to the Pew Research Center, 43% of eligible White voters voted in all 3 elections compared to 27% for Black voters, 19% for Hispanic voters, and 21% for Asian voters.

If the overall voter turnout is higher, that means the groups who usually don’t partake in voting are showing up in larger numbers. Those groups would include non-White voters, younger voters, and lower-income voters – all important voting blocs for the Democratic party. We know the Republican party skews toward older, White voters.

That’s why it is so important for the Democratic party if the most people possible come out to vote instead of the usual crowd in elections. Things like early voting can help with this as it’s sometimes hard for young people and lower-income workers to get to a polling station on Election Day itself. Early voting gives them a few weeks to find the time to vote.

The Latest US Election Odds

The fact is the Democrats are going to need every vote they can get, because the recent shift in betting odds on this election is going in Trump’s favor as we are less than 3 weeks away from November 5.

Trump is now up to a 56.5% chance of victory, which is almost 5 percentage points higher than last week. Harris is way down at 43.0%, a stunning turnaround after she was at 54.3% on September 19.

At top-rated sportsbooks, Trump has shot up from -120 odds at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review to learn more) to -160. Harris is now +135. BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review to learn more) has nearly the same thing with Trump at -155 and Harris also at +135.

Some polling still favors Harris, and the FiveThirtyEight model has her winning 53 times out of 100 in their most recent simulations. But the polls could prove to be very wrong for this election, especially if turnout is a record high as we might see if Georgia’s results are any indication.